


Your Bones

by katydidmischief (cassiejamie)



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Creepy, Kink Meme, Life after the Triskelion, Multi, Redeemed!Rumlow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-31
Updated: 2014-05-31
Packaged: 2018-01-27 16:35:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1717331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassiejamie/pseuds/katydidmischief
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Most of their time is spent on buses and trains, in cars, and walking, and Brock is sure his legs have never been so muscled in his life, but they can't afford to stop.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Bones

_in the spring we made a boat  
out of feathers, out of bones. _

HYDRA still hunts—

_Cut off one head, two will take it's place._

—for the lost assets. They are subtle and creeping, and both of them know that they'll never escape if they're caught: one will return to the chair, the other will be killed. They choose to not think about what would happen to their third.

(He'd be forced down by the strength of hands and drugs and manipulation, into the chair, and turned into something neither of his companions can stomach. After all, he's meant for better things than they.)

So they keep moving, nomads in a world that champions permanence; they spend a week in Cincinnati, three days in Dalton, and ten in Charlotte. Most of their time is spent on buses and trains, in cars, and walking, and Brock is sure his legs have never been so muscled in his life, but they can't afford to stop.

“They can't get in here,” Tony Stark tells them one evening.

They're in San Diego, the summer sun warming them past toasty and into sweaty when they trudge along the sidewalks, but Steve's stopped them for the night at a hotel, thank fuck. Their burn phone is nearly out of minutes, yet Tony won't stop giving them reasons to come to New York where the Tower has been secured and reinforced against HYDRA and other threats.

He can see how even James is restraining himself from commenting on that: there is no securing against HYDRA, not when they can transform into whomever they want and get so close you won't even know it was them until they had the garotte to your neck.

Steve soothes him back, using prettier words than Brock would have chosen, and then, “We're okay, Tony. We'll keep in touch, okay?” before hanging up and looking between them. “What's for dinner?”

The answer is sandwiches and packets of oatmeal, water from the tap in the bathroom, the same as usual, and it's eaten in silence because they're all too tired to do more than anything by rote. Sleep, thankfully, is found soon after.

(They sleep in a pile, the second queen bed unused despite how cramped they are: Steve at the bottom, on his back with Brock covering one side and James the other, and it's almost touching if it weren't for the fact that beneath the pillows both assets have stashed weapons. If not for the tight grip they have on his person, if not for the clear fear written across their faces even in dreams.

_Protect_ , their minds murmur, _Protect him_.)

_we set fire to our homes_

When Steve had shown him the picture, his heart had stopped in his chest before stuttering back up.

He had believed HYDRA's ideals once, believed that they were headed toward better things and a better future, but he'd seen the Soldier and his abuse and started to question.

(You don't question in voice, you question in thought, and even then, you fear for your life and you don't let the questions show in your eyes lest someone figure it out.

His lover's death had shown him this, in glorious technicolor.)

The picture had ended the questions: he is loyal to Steve, honestly, and he is loyal to the Soldier, and now he knows that he must save them both from forces that would love a matched set.

_distant rhythm of the drum_

They power through Arizona and New Mexico, climbing onto a bus in Amarillo; their new burn phone is in Steve's hand and he turns it over and over, a worrystone, until he starts to drift off and Brock catches it before it hits the floor.

A transfer in Oklahoma City to Little Rock and then through to Memphis, where Steve hems and haws over the price of train tickets at the station until the phone gives a buzz and a faint tremble in his pocket; they crowd around the screen, muscles tensed in fear and worry, until the letters appear and Steve lets out a strangled laugh:

**You still need to sign my cards.  
43°41′46″N 70°06′28″W**

It takes several minutes for him to recover, because this is the modern age and he knows that Fury lies—he lies like he can't help himself—and Steve should have guessed that his lying wouldn't stop with something so serious.

Steve would very much like to vomit right then, his stomach turned by the shock, but he holds onto himself by his fingertips.

“Maine?” James asks, the coordinates processing through his mind as he visualizes a map, and Steve swallows down the acid in his throat.

A Google search at a free cafe confirms and they wind up at the bus depot again, but they don't head directly to the location Coulson has sent them:

Brock's paranoia has worsened the closer they get to the East Coast and now he tells them that Boston is one of HYDRA's strongholds. The file dump had alerted the world to most of the HYDRA bases, but a few of the oldest had eluded being discovered by virtue of the fact that they were mere mentions in reports and buried in paperwork as well. To find their names would take a skilled eye and then to find their locations would take better intel than sites like Reddit or Buzzfeed had.

All they'd need is to trip over a HYDRA agent from the Boston office and it's all over...

“Okay, we won't go,” Steve soothes, “Not yet. I'll ask Tony to look into this,” because James is insistent that they cannot simply trust that the message is genuine, and Steve knows that both of them need confirmation before they head North.

Brock and James nod, satisfied by that idea, and as they settle onto the bus that'll take them into Nashville, the two of them relax minutely. They sleep with knives discreetly in hand, however, curled even closer to Steve than usual and Steve doesn't mention it to either of them.

_as we drifted toward the storm_

It had been easy, once Brock had decided, to formulate a plan and run with it; he'd heard the rumor that Hill had made it to DC before Fury had fallen and positioning himself so he's the one to ride in the back of the truck with their captives is far easier than one would have expected.

Maria's quick with the painstick, but he's STRIKE and he's learned to dodge, saying, “I'm on your side. I am,” over and over, until he gets out, “Look, the order was to kill them all and bury the bodies. We've got five minutes before we hit the site... We need to get them out of here.”

Her distrust is clear.

“STRIKE is HYDRA.”

“I have intel.”

“You're _HYDRA_ ,” she says again, tossing the torch to Steve while keeping herself between the others and himself.

“Not since Jackson.”

There's silence then, just for a few moments as the floor of the truck hits the ground and they start struggling out onto the road; Sam, Natasha, Steve... they're all out and taking cover.

Maria lingers, then she tells him, “You have half an hour to prove that to me,” and drops back.

_troubled spirits on my chest  
where they laid to rest._

The shower in their motel is tiny and stained, but James still crams himself in with the other when Brock begs off from eating dinner and retreats to the bathroom.

Steve sits on the toilet lid, watching through the torn curtain as Bucky winds soapy hands over mottled skin, bruises on Brock from their run in with HYDRA scouts four days ago. He sighs at the thought, his heart tight in his chest: they'd been close to Virginia and DC, Steve needing to get word to Sam that everyone's okay, but they'd gotten caught and nearly been taken in. The fight that followed had been bloody and vicious, and Brock had fought so hard, he'd fractured both wrists which are now splinted and covered in plastic bags. Bucky's wounds had healed slower than Steve's own, but they'd healed.

“Do you need your medicine?” Steve asks, voice sharp in the stillness. (He needs to stop thinking about how easily he nearly lost them both; he needs to stop thinking about how much he needs them both.)

Brock manages to keep the flinch internal, and licks his wet lips. “I'm fine.”

“You're trembling.”

He shrugs, unsure how to explain that the shiver is not from pain or water temperature, but from memories that haven't left him alone since the attack. God, but they were so close to giving HYDRA leverage, giving them something that could turn this all back in their favor...

James holds onto his shoulders as he launches himself for the towel outside the shower, vomiting bile and stomach acid until there's nothing left; he hears the squeak as the water is turned off, then the fluff of a towel before it's wrapped around him.

Steve is there, then, keeping him from falling on his face, and Brock buries his nose into Steve's skin, breathing in a scent all Steve's own. Were he a sentimental man, he might call it apple pie and summer days, but he's not and he won't and he takes half an hour to gather his strength together before telling them, “I need to sleep,” in lieu of “I'm having a panic attack,” because he hasn't had one since Rommel died and he's not having one now.

No. Just no.

(They'd made an example of him, something only HYDRA agents would understand. SHIELD's loyal had all been suitably horrified, but they'd never understand precisely what had made some of “their” strongest go pale at the photos.

Sometimes Rumlow wishes he'd been there.

Then he thinks about the Soldier and the mission they'd gone on in the immediate aftermath, how the Soldier had refused to let go of him when he'd hung over the edge of the building, prepared to go in a fashion that wouldn't have seemed like suicide.

Then he thinks about the Soldier and those who would have seen him abused even further.

Then he thinks about the Soldier.

And Steve.)

_so hold on.  
hold on to what we are._

The Helicarriers go down; Rumlow is designated the chopper pilot for two reasons, only one of which he is told explicitly.

(They tell him this: he's a pilot and a good one. They'll need his skill when flying into an area with falling debris.

They don't tell him this, thought he knows it: if he makes one false move, if he betrays him, Nick Fury will kill him without a second thought. He'll be shot dead in a breath, which might actually be kind given what HYDRA would do to him.)

It's after the Triskelion falls, when he's standing in front of the Soldier, talking him down from self-flagellation for the failed mission and lacking the usual chain of command to make a report, that he realizes they're giving him a length of trust. He could easily hang himself with it, but he wants them to understand that he knows better—that Pierce would never have delivered on the things he'd promised nor would the Soldier have been left to wither and die in peace—and he resolves to protect the two people who can't do it themselves:

Steve is too trusting, too idealistic, and the Soldier has been a puppet for seven decades.

This will be his penance.

_hold on to your heart._

He wakes.

His breath comes in pants and his ears are filled with static, and it takes too many long minutes for him to stop clenching at the linens beneath his hands.

“Easy,” Steve is murmuring, “We're all right. Just breathe,” and, “I'm here. Bucky's here. We're safe.”

He gasps at the air still, trying to get the rock on his chest to slide off, and he's so focused on it that he doesn't note the building sensation as James does his best to distract Brock from the remnants of the nightmare with teeth and tongue and fingers.

“Easy,” Steve repeats, this time nuzzling into Brock's temple and murmuring, “We have you. You're safe. We're all safe.”

The whimper is involuntary, just as the hip jerk is when that roving, biting mouth swallows him down.

As distractions go, it may not be sanctioned as a medical treatment, but it's working well enough and he stops seeing Rommel Jackson's broken body in his mind and starts seeing the long line of James' back as he arches and flexes with every suck.

His hands are shaky, but steady enough that when he reaches out to settle one on Steve's face, it doesn't twitch or pull or smack or anything he doesn't want. For that, he gets a smile, one of those genuine, gut-clenching, brain-meltingly gorgeous smiles, from Steve, and a kiss that turns filthy so incredibly quickly.

“Fuck,” he breathes when they break.

“Shoulda seen him when we were kids,” James murmurs up, a line of saliva trailing between puffy lips and the tip of Brock's dick, “Girls used to love that mouth 'a his.”

“Your's ain't bad either,” Brock says back, a hint of amusement in the tone.

Steve rolls his eyes. “Get back to work.”

It doesn't take much more until he's coming, spurting into James' mouth who swallows it down while staring up at both sets of eyes; the exhaustion sets in seconds later, an old familiar feeling coming over him as if he'd just done hours of training.

“Go back to sleep,” James tells him, “We're safe.”

“No where is safe.”

Steve kisses his forehead, his lips. “We're safe as along as we're together, okay?”

“Okay.”

_going where we've never been._

The units are all lined up, one beside the other, and linked via a neural network: their dreams are shared and their experiences within them. Thankfully, newer tech makes it possible to handle each man without danger of them ever fully waking, makes it possible to care for them without having to actually interact and potentially cause psychological problems.

“I updated the software, added a few extra parameters so it'll toss them a few issues here and there,” Tony murmurs, looking at the bank of stasis pods, “Keep it so they won't question if it's real or not.”

Maria nods, swallowing thickly. “Thank you,” she manages out, feeling pathetically grateful that he's allowed her access to the section of the Tower after so many months of questioning if her asking for his help was even a good idea.

“Bruce and I are working on some nanotech,” he adds, once the silence begins to raze through his nerves. He glances toward Barnes and Rogers, “Their healing factor is slowed by the stasis but is advanced enough that they'll be able to come out of the units before their partner there. We're hoping to get something in with Rumlow to accelerate the regrowth of skin over the burns.

“Which might repair the brain damage from the fall.”

She sighs, “And might make him remember being a HYDRA loyal.”

“And might make him remember being a HYDRA loyal,” he repeats, nodding.

“Well,” she says, “we'll have to cross that bridge when we get to it,” and turns to go, glancing one more time over the line of men, over Fury and Natasha and Sam, before taking a steadying breath and leaving.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt](http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/19023.html?thread=44975695#t44975695) at [avengerkink](http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/).


End file.
